Food, Fitness and Friends in Flagstaff

I first visited Flagstaff Arizona in 1995 when Katy & Dave were living in Phoenix.  We were en route to the Grand Canyon and stopped off at the Beaver Street Brewery – us being MIT beavers after all.  I fell in love with it instantly.  A gorgeous snow-capped mountain towers over the main drag.  Massively long trains come through town every few minutes – the very picture of the old west – parallel to old route 66.  The college town vibe generated by the campus of Northern Arizona University provides liberal politics in an otherwise very red state. 

Susan and Skip bought a house up here a couple of years ago.  And I do mean up – Flag is at 7000 feet elevation.  When you come from sea level you really feel it.  Andy I went for a couple swimming sessions in the 50 meter pool at NAU and there is a sign hanging over the pool reminding you of the elevation – those first few laps are a bitch.  Swim teams from around the globe come here for their high altitude training.  Where normally you start to feel your body loosening up on lap #3, instead you feel yourself searching for more air.  Andy went for a run and he said he never had a chance to sweat – his lungs gave out before his muscles even got a workout. 

We’ve been up here for Christmas, up here for a wedding, and now we come for our last ‘just landed’ week of getting sorted out before our real road trip begins.  On this trip we are trying to imagine what living in each city would be like – not just visiting or vacationing, but your everyday humdrum activities – grocery shopping, using the post office, working out, etc.  This is truly a difficult exercise in Flagstaff because every day here feels like vacation.  You cannot wake up to deep blue skies and snow capped mountains and not think about going outside. 

Over the summer our trainer moved her business from the gym to the park.  It was a very welcome transition and I spent the summer learning how to get a full workout with cables and boxing gloves that you can bring to any park and have a good resistance workout.  In Flagstaff I recalled Buffalo Park, which is in the heart of the city, and dragged Andy along with our cables and boxing gloves.  As we headed out the door Susan reminded me that there is a circuit there already – a 2 mile loop with stations every 100 yards or so to encourage different exercises.  Our cables and gloves stayed in the car. The workout was superb. The views – especially when a herd of deer came through the park – were superb.  Sam will be proud of us when she reads this, for getting our workouts in, but in a city like this, it really is easy.

It is also essential to workout because the food is really really good.  Our friends say they’re bored of the restaurants in Flagstaff – but Andy and I think they are crazy.  There may only be 5 exceptional restaurants in town, but unless you are eating out every single day, I find it hard to think you’d get bored.  There’s the young kid who opened Pizzicletta – a dream he had cycling through Italy and eating proper Neapolitan pizza.  He is only open for dinner, only has dine-in service, only has a long communal table, and when the dough he has made for the day runs out, then that’s it folks.  There is the team who run Criolla Kitchen and its sister restaurant Brix – who do an eclectic modern American fare.  And there is the albeit somewhat pretentious chef owner of Tinderbox Kitchen who not only stamps his waitstaff and paper table covering with his trademark T, but also stamps his menu with the red letters “No Substitutions”.  This appears to be a new trend in the kingdom of foodieland.  Chefs are upset with the ‘make it your way’ customizations that Burger King taught us and want us to try their flavor combinations. 

Halibut over sweet potato gnocchi in a sage butter sauce at Brix

 I’m torn about this.  The list of foods I don’t like is a mile long – this always come as a major surprise to those who know me well – with all those tasting menus with exotic ingredients I am always posting pictures of.  But in a tasting menu, it’s ok to eat one beet, one piece of cauliflower, one single leaf of a brussel sprout.  I am not sure I could handle a whole portion of these foods, let alone an American-sized portion.  I understand that a busy kitchen cannot handle all the substitutions and requests americans desire, but a simple ‘hold the beets’ shouldn’t be prohibited;  Especially if that means you’re losing most of the audience in town.  I decided to be brave and ordered the chef’s tasting menu – with no preview whatsoever of what we’d be served.  There were beets, and it was delicious.  My only criticism was that the ‘main course’ of the menu was a steak covered in steak sauce.  It was a fantastic piece of meat, but a) it didn’t need a smothering of sauce and b) is steak really a showstopper worthy of a place on a tasting menu? 

Farewell Dinner at Brix with Susan and Skip

We ate well in Flagstaff, yes we did.  And after dinner, we relaxed well.   A nightly ritual of donning a swimsuit and streaking through the freezing air to the 102 degree heated hot tub;  an awkward ten minutes waiting for the motion sensitive spotlights to turn off before a dark sky dripping with stars to the horizon revealed itself to us.  And then zip – zap, was that a shooting star? And another?  Turns out it was near peak Leonid meteor shower time.  Lucky us. 

It is with a lump in our throats that we say Farewell to Flagstaff – the snow capped Mt Humphrey lingering in the rear view mirror for over an hour as we head out, properly, on our road trip adventure across America.   We can only hope there will be more friends, more food and yes, even more fitness on the next legs of our quest to find a city as everyday livable as Flag.